The discussion is about when and the reasons why a group decides to drop from 3-healing content to 2-healing content. (There was also a lot of discussion about the “right” and “wrong” ways to do Baleroc. Maybe I’ll do a post outlining our strat seeing as how it hasn’t changed much since our first kill.)

To be truthful, this is a decision that can only be made on a guild-to-guild, fight-to-fight basis. There is no blanket statement of “every guild should be able to 2-heal every fight in current content at X point of gear/experience.”

So anything I say is strictly from the perspective of my guild and our gear/experience.

Our core healing team (and really our only healers at this point on the roster) are myself as a disc priest, a holy pally, and a resto druid.

According to many people that look at logs until their eyes bleed, holy pallies and resto druids are the to-be class at the moment for healing. No one else is useless, just these two are the cream of the crop at the moment. The pendulum will eventually swing, that’s just where it stands right now.

I don’t know if our pally has another spec. I’ve never seen him do anything but heal. And he does a damn fine job of it. He can solo heal 10-man Chimaeron. He’s nearly solo-healed Magmaw (I was there as disc, but just DPSed and only healed through Atonement). He’s crazy and needs challenge to thrive.

Our resto druid has a work schedule that often forces her to miss the beginnings of raid time. But when she’s there, she’s top notch. She has a feral tanking offspec, but is awfully squishy for current content.

And then me, balancing out the trifecta. I can’t quite raid heal as well as the druid but I can just about keep up with the pally on tank heals. I run 2 disc specs: one with Atonement and one without.

Naturally, we started out 3-healing all of Firelands.

But then someone would have to go AFK for trash.

Eh, just 2-heal it until they get back.

And then we couldn’t pacify the grumblings of having to wait, again, for the druid before starting. Well, we’ll 2-heal the trash and see if we can 2-heal Shannox and Beth while we wait for her.

As we got more gear, mana was less of a concern. As we got more experience, we could better predict where the damage spikes would be and sometimes the DPS even learned not to stand in the bad. Sometimes.

2-healing the first 2-3 bosses became standard.

Then we didn’t have the druid for a whole night.

2-heal all the bosses!

And so the pally and I set the standard for 2-healing 6/7.

The majority of our attempts at Rag have also been 2-healed. But since none of us healers have a DPS spec, I get brought in on my mage. Who hadn’t seen anything of Firelands before Rag and wasn’t even fully epic from T11 content. (Stupid ring slot…)

With the pally and I having done it (a less than desirable comp, let me tell you), the druid had to get in on the action for that the following week. I got to DPS on my mage the whole night!

Then we had some ripples in the pond. MT left a few weeks ago, we were cycling through people with viable tanking sets to find a replacement. Holy pally left. Tir left. A few people came back from retirement, including our original MT (and previous GM). Holy pally came back.

We started the raid week with a new comp; a mix of some old and some new and some in new classes/roles.

The officers decided to take the week a little easier, let people relax a bit. Just have fun and stuff. We decided to 3-heal FL.

And the uproar from the other 2 healers could be heard without vent. (And one’s in Canada!)

“Did we do something wrong?”

“Are we not good enough?”

“I don’t get why we’re doing this.”

“WTF?!?!”

And that’s what is was the whole night.

It was a good thing we were 2-healing on some fights. We had a guy that had always flown on Alysrazor but was on a different toon so was responsible for interrupts on the druids this time around. I had to dispel 16 times. 16 failed interrupts. No way we could have 2-healed through that extra dispelling and damage.

…

We did take some more stabs at Rag over the week. We benched some of the people that weren’t able to break 20k in full T12 and brought in some fresh faces that are performing better in less gear. So the learning curve is starting over again, but we’ve got much better damage output (making P1 go so much faster), and far fewer people dying to stupid. Had a few miscommunications regarding the adds in the transition, but we made progress (for that group).

Monday night was our last stab at Rag prior to the announced, yet completely ambiguous, rolling nerfs to Firelands.

Our hunter’s computer apparently blew up over the weekend and he was desperately trying to scratch together parts to get rolling again, with no luck. Several of our DPS (core and replacements) were no where to be found. Our resto druid was trapped at work.

Long story, we didn’t get to see Rag again before the nerfs. Possibly by the time you are reading this the hotfix will be in place and the changes announced. We’re all fingers crossed that the nerfs won’t hit Rag – just yet.

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6 comments on “Raid in Review: 2 to 3 or 3 to 2”

Now I’m a bit embarrassed that I’m not more willing to two heal things. I know we can; we’ve done Shannox and Ryolith before. But I do like the margin three healers give.

We run the same comp and if someone goes dps, it’s the priest. I have a dps spec. Sometimes I use it… for dailies. I believe our holy pally has a ret set, but I’m not making her dps either. It just feels like if one person goes dps, the priest is the best bet.

What does one do when there’s no willing to swap healer? Not that I ask if our disc priest is willing, I just tell her. But that’s why I’m co-raidlead, so I can tell people things and they have to do it.

If no one’s willing to swap, just ask yourself if the swap really needs to happen. If you’re killing the boss just fine with 3 healers and no healer wants to step out, just leave it be. Our pally gets too bored with 3 healers and I prefer to be on my mage, anyway. But that;s our group.

Bottom line, if the boss dies, and everyone is happy, don’t change anything if they don’t want to.